She hugged Floinn's shaggy neck and took up the reins and climbed into the saddle as Rhys mounted his tall black horse. Ceallach climbed up on Flann. The ponies started home without any touch of reins or heels, and the black horse went with them as if it were still a dream.
EIGHT
The Way to Donn
The wind blew warm on Ciaran's face and the horses moved in easy rhythm, a sleepy kind of progress up a road still well within Caer Wiell's lands, but the hills of An Beag's domains were at their left, across a rolling shagginess of hedges. There were freeholds here abouts, where staunch dale families had settled on border land and held it. Caer Wiell aided such folk, who were Caer Wiell's bulwark; and if the company had turned aside to left or right they would have found welcome and a cup of ale gladly given to each, ale and not unlikely a supper offered, had they come at sundown. They pros pered, these freeholds, and so the road proclaimed, barely fit for carts, but still traveled often enough that no grass grew in it, a fair fine road as roads went on the marches.
They wended up from the turning of it and met the Bainbourne again where it wandered, a reedy stream crossed here and there by fords and trampled by sheep, of which they saw several flocks in the distance; or by pigs, where Alhhard's steading set its back against the water, a rough cluster of buildings next old and twisted willows, and rough fences made of willow logs and stones the Bainbourne scoured. The place prospered. The boy who kept the pigs called out to the company as they came, and stood on the fence across Bainbourne to wave; others appeared, men and women, and dogs and children who pelted across the stream in a great splashing of water to run beside the horses.
"It be the lord," the children cried, jogging along beside the col umn, and there would be gossip from steading to steading by the fortnight; but Ciaran smiled to see them, and the horses tolerated the dogs and darting bodies. "Lord," the eldest shouted, a boy whose stride was longest and near that of a man, running along by his horse, outdistancing all the others. "Will you not come across to us? There be ale and cider."
"Thank your father," Ciaran said, "and wish all the house well from me. I cannot stay this time. Gods, Eada, your legs are longer, are they not?"
"Aye, lord." The boy panted along with all his kin outdistanced, and the last of the dogs about him. "That they be. And I know the bow, lord."
"Do you? But your father would have taught you."
"I have fifteen summers, lord."
The lad was falling behind now. He shouted the last. "So, well." Ciaran turned somewhat in the saddle. "When you have sixteen, then come to Caer Wiell a season."
The boy trotted to a halt among his dogs, waving his hand and grinning. The whole company waved back at the steading, and so the willows took it back again.
The horses protested, having caught a whiff of shed and shelter, and it took curb and heel to keep their minds to the road instead.
But the company moved with purpose, if safe among their own folk, in lands that knew them, and no man of the escort muttered or said anything of regret for the ale.
"The stars and sky tonight for all of us," Ciaran said. He looked beyond Beorc where Domhnull rode—silent, Domhnull, which he was not wont to be. He is a boy, thought Ciaran, Domhnull looked very young in that moment, affecting not to hear them—so young, so young Ciaran dared not half so much freedom as Beorc used with him; so young his pride was green and tender. I was wrong ever to have agreed to this. He thought of the boy Eada, running by the horses, eagerness for battle shining in young eyes which had seen no sight grimmer than autumn butchering, and he shuddered.
Moths and torches. The glory blinds them. O Domhnull, I never should have heard you.
"It is a long road," Ciaran said then quietly as they rode. "And there are places in it—Domhnull, the more I think on this—Listen," he said, having the youth's attention, marking the quickness of his eyes to imagined slight or praise. "The way by Lioslinn—I rode this when I was a boy and never since. But mind it lies near both Damn and Bradhaeth."
"I do mind it."
"It winds, between the hills once you have come up from the lake. There are rocks above you." For a space he tried to tell it, every stone and turn that he remembered, where they had hunted once, far afield from Donn, he and his brother and his cousins. Domhnull listened, frowning in his earnestness to remember all he could, and Ciaran felt again a narrowing despair. "I should remember," he said once, "if I saw it."
"I shall manage," said Domhnull and made light of it if only for his pleasing. "Lord, the sun will guide me; and I shall look for the spring. And for the rest, we will go quickly and stir up nothing; or outride it."
It did not comfort him, the more they rode within the sight of the hills where the way bent westerly. He rode silently and the men with him were quiet now for the most part, having fallen silent while he spoke and taking the contagion of stillness from him.
The mood had come on him gradually, and lay darker and darker, from the bright morning when they had left the keep, Meadhbh and Ceallach trotting along with them . . . because it is safe, he had said to Branwyn last; because there is no cause that they should not ride in the fair center of our own lands, with Rhys to watch them. And to watch Caer Wiell while I am gone. No farther than the Crossroads. Is so much to be made of this?
Now it seemed mad to have done, and a light sweat lay on his limbs, for all that the sun was sinking. They must be safe by now, he thought. Rhys must be sitting in hold, they at the fire with Branwyn, Muirne too, and Leannan, and Rhys doubtless having a drink with Ruadhan. ... He built the ordinary things, a fragile structure, stone by familiar stone within his mind, while the sky turned golden and perilous about them and they came near to parting.
I wanted it so, he thought, recalling the peace of the morning. I wished to believe it, the way I want to believe Domhnull will meet no hazard.
But he will not And they have not He persuaded himself again, gathered up his courage in both his hands and tried to be cheerful. He smiled against the silences, rode with his hand attentive to the reins.
"Lord?" asked Domhnull.
"I was thinking how I am a prisoner, young friend, and how this great cousin of yours and I would be at swords-point if I were to go beyond Lioslinn. And yet—"
"Lord," said Beorc, "no."
"What, my guardian, not try you?"
"Lord," said Beorc, "I beg you."
"You are worried, old wolf." Ciaran heaved a sigh. "There would be no peace for me at home if I were to do that."
"I should be on my way," said Domhnull, glancing toward the distant hills where the sun was setting. "For my part, lord, I had as lief know you had the shorter ride on the morrow, and if you were home sooner than you had promised, you would make your lady wife the happier for it."
A while longer Ciaran rode in silence.
"Lord," said Domhnull.
"Aye," he said. "So you are right." He reined his horse aside off the road, as they had stopped to rest many a time this day, not to tire the horses beyond quick recovery. But this time Domhnull and the four who would go with him unsaddled the horses they had ridden and set the gear on the five remounts, which thought ill of the mat ter.
"So you must take care," Ciaran said, still afoot when Domhnull and the others sat ahorse.
"Lord, I shall."
"You carry that token I gave you."